The present invention relates to authentication of a battery module (charge battery module) mounted on an electric vehicle (referring to both an automobile having only an electric motor as a running power source, and a hybrid car having an electric motor and an internal-combustion engine as the running power source), operation control of an electric vehicle according to the authentication result, acquisition of management information of the battery module, and maintenance service using the acquired management information, and relates to a technology that can be effectively applied to a plug-in type electric vehicle and a maintenance system thereof, for example.
A plug-in type electric vehicle is required to have a number of battery modules mounted thereon in order to secure a large electric power capacity, and thus the share of cost of battery modules relative to the electric vehicle is very large. In view of this, it is considered desirable to reject imitations of battery modules of electric vehicles. There has been conventionally proposed a technology that distinguishes imitations from genuine products through authentication of consumables. For example, International Patent Publication WO/2007/132518 describes a technology that uses an authentication microcomputer for mutual authentication between a PC and a battery pack. Thereby it is determined whether the mounted battery pack is genuine or not.